Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

We hope you followed our recommendations on how to publish a blog and have just published your latest post. You spent time sweating over the headline, the introduction is stellar, and this is the best article that you’ve ever written. Months later though, nothing happens – people are not lining up to interview you and there is no buzz about your latest masterpiece. Whether you are a seasoned blogger or a newbie, you have to consider spending time and effort to market your content.

Overwhelmed by the sense of possibility? Lucky for you, we have a cheat sheet with our top tips on how to promote your blog articles. You don’t have to use all the strategies at once, but picking a few and sticking with them will take you from traffic famine to feast.

1. Get Friendly with Social Media
Engage on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn – add as many meaningful contacts to your friends’ lists as you can – this is your tribe that will help you receiving more “likes”, “retweets” and “repins”. Make you posts frequent and don’t forget about joining all the relevant groups that will benefit from your blockbuster content.

2. Optimize with Keywords
Make it easier on ever changing search engines to find your content – add all the relevant keywords that you can think of. The more popular a keyword is, the more traffic it will drive to your blog.

3. Don’t Forget Bookmarking SitesStumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit are a must. All four display news based on users’ votes and personal preferences. I love these because you get instant user feedback, and know how your content ranks.

4. Syndicate
Sites like Outbrain, Alltop and Amazon to get in front of millions of readers in different categories, but don’t overdo it as appearing on too many sites can actually drive down your rankings on search engines.

5. Email Marketing
Email is still the most effective way of digital marketing, and building your own list of contacts will give you a massive return on investment over time. People still perceive emails as a very personal method of communications – it’s been tried and tested. So, if you don’t have a list yet, you should consider building one, and MailChimp is one of the best free tools in the market.

What blog marketing strategies work for you? Do you have any tips for our readers?

Julia Astashkina is heading the Marketing and Outreach Section at the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in Qatar. She runs organization’s multiple communications and marketing initiatives and is a guest blogger of the Digital Qatar blog. Julia has extensive experience in strategic marketing, communications, and social innovation. She has an MBA and other degrees from Georgetown and ESADE, and is the community lead for Creative Commons Qatar.